IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ems/eureri/20379.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Drivers of Sales Performance: A Contemporary Meta-Analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Verbeke, W.J.M.I.
  • Dietz, H.M.S.
  • Verwaal, E.

Abstract

It has been twenty-five years since the publication of a comprehensive review of the full spectrum of sales-performance drivers. This study takes stock of the contemporary field and synthesizes empirical evidence from the period 1982–2008. The authors revise the classification scheme for sales performance determinants devised by Walker, Churchill, and Ford (1977) and estimate both the predictive validity of its sub-categories and the impact of a range of moderators on determinant-sales performance relationships. Based on multivariate causal model analysis, the results make two major observations: (1) Five sub-categories demonstrate significant relationships with sales performance: selling-related knowledge (β=.28), degree of adaptiveness (β=.27), role ambiguity (β=-.25), cognitive aptitude (β=.23) and work engagement (β=.23). (2) These sub-categories are moderated by measurement method, research context, and sales-type variables. The authors identify managerial implications of the results and offer suggestions for further research, including the conjecture that as the world is moving toward a knowledge-intensive economy, salespeople could be functioning as knowledge-brokers. The results seem to back this supposition and indicate how it might inspire future research in the field of personal selling.

Suggested Citation

  • Verbeke, W.J.M.I. & Dietz, H.M.S. & Verwaal, E., 2010. "Drivers of Sales Performance: A Contemporary Meta-Analysis," ERIM Report Series Research in Management ERS-2010-031-ORG, Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM), ERIM is the joint research institute of the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University and the Erasmus School of Economics (ESE) at Erasmus University Rotterdam.
  • Handle: RePEc:ems:eureri:20379
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repub.eur.nl/pub/20379/ERS-2010-031-ORG.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robert W. Palmatier & Srinath Gopalakrishna & Mark B. Houston, 2006. "Returns on Business-to-Business Relationship Marketing Investments: Strategies for Leveraging Profits," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 25(5), pages 477-493, September.
    2. MacKenzie, Scott B. & Podsakoff, Philip M. & Fetter, Richard, 1991. "Organizational citizenship behavior and objective productivity as determinants of managerial evaluations of salespersons' performance," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 50(1), pages 123-150, October.
    3. Simon Rodan & Charles Galunic, 2004. "More than network structure: how knowledge heterogeneity influences managerial performance and innovativeness," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(6), pages 541-562, June.
    4. Elie Ofek & Miklos Sarvary, 2001. "Leveraging the Customer Base: Creating Competitive Advantage Through Knowledge Management," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 47(11), pages 1441-1456, November.
    5. Frank M. Bass & Jerry Wind, 1995. "Introduction to the Special Issue: Empirical Generalizations in Marketing," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 14(3_supplem), pages 1-5.
    6. Erin Anderson & David C. Schmittlein, 1984. "Integration of the Sales Force: An Empirical Examination," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 15(3), pages 385-395, Autumn.
    7. Paul S. Adler, 2001. "Market, Hierarchy, and Trust: The Knowledge Economy and the Future of Capitalism," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 12(2), pages 215-234, April.
    8. Behrman, Douglas N. & Perreault, William Jr., 1982. "Measuring the performance of industrial salespersons," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 10(3), pages 355-370, September.
    9. Cravens, David W. & Lassk, Felicia G. & Low, George S. & Marshall, Greg W. & Moncrief, William C., 2004. "Formal and informal management control combinations in sales organizations: The impact on salesperson consequences," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 57(3), pages 241-248, March.
    10. Marshall, Greg W. & Goebel, Daniel J. & Moncrief, William C., 2003. "Hiring for success at the buyer-seller interface," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 56(4), pages 247-255, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jörg Bothe, 2019. "Sales Management Key Success Factors In A Complex Environment," Romanian Economic Business Review, Romanian-American University, vol. 14(1), pages 7-14, March.
    2. Wirtz, Jochen & Fritze, Martin P. & Jaakkola, Elina & Gelbrich, Katja & Hartley, Nicole, 2021. "Service products and productization," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 137(C), pages 411-421.
    3. Gawai MILIND & Iyer RADHA & Kedia NEEL & Bhakkad PRATIK, 2019. "Ethical Leadership and Its Relationship with Sales Force Performance Mediated by Trust of Sales Employees on their Leaders," Economics and Applied Informatics, "Dunarea de Jos" University of Galati, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, issue 1, pages 120-131.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Qing Cao & Likoebe M. Maruping & Riki Takeuchi, 2006. "Disentangling the Effects of CEO Turnover and Succession on Organizational Capabilities: A Social Network Perspective," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 17(5), pages 563-576, October.
    2. Kim, Stephen K. & Tiwana, Amrit, 2017. "Dual Control of Salesforce in Partially Integrated Channels," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 93(3), pages 304-316.
    3. Malik, Tariq, 2012. "Disparate association between alliance social capital and the global pharmaceutical firm's performance," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 21(6), pages 1017-1028.
    4. Locander, David A. & Locander, Jennifer A. & Weinberg, Frankie J., 2020. "How salesperson traits and intuitive judgments influence adaptive selling: A sensemaking perspective," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 452-462.
    5. Emma L. Hitchen & Petra A. Nylund & Eric Viardot, 2017. "The Effectiveness Of Open Innovation: Do Size And Performance Of Open Innovation Groups Matter?," International Journal of Innovation Management (ijim), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 21(03), pages 1-24, April.
    6. Krickx, Guido A., 1995. "Vertical integration in the computer mainframe industry: A transaction cost interpretation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 75-91, January.
    7. Thorsten Posselt & Thomas Bürkle, 2006. "Franchising als Mischsystem: Die Bestimmung des optimalen Anteils der franchisenehmerbetriebenen Einheiten am Gesamtsystem," Schmalenbach Journal of Business Research, Springer, vol. 58(2), pages 150-168, March.
    8. Arvind Ashta & Djamchid Assadi, 2009. "An Analysis of European Online micro-lending Websites," Working Papers CEB 09-059.RS, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    9. Groza, Mark D. & Groza, Mya Pronschinske, 2018. "Salesperson regulatory knowledge and sales performance," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 37-46.
    10. Alfredo Esposto, 2004. "Contractual Integration of Physician and Hospital Services in the U.S," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 8(1), pages 49-69, March.
    11. Kashif Shafiq & Muhammad Waqas & Arslan Rafi, 2017. "Impact Of Salespersons’ Skill-Sets On Sales Performance: An Empirical Investigation Of A Telecommunication Company," IBT Journal of Business Studies (JBS), Ilma University, Faculty of Management Science, vol. 13(2), pages 1-10.
    12. Susan Athey & Scott Stern, 1998. "An Empirical Framework for Testing Theories About Complimentarity in Organizational Design," NBER Working Papers 6600, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Kwak, Hyokjin & Anderson, Rolph E. & Leigh, Thomas W. & Bonifield, Scott D., 2019. "Impact of salesperson macro-adaptive selling strategy on job performance and satisfaction," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 42-55.
    14. Parinov, Sergey, 2022. "Micro-level description of the economic coordination," MPRA Paper 114816, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Jacqueline Fendt, 2013. "Lost in Translation? On Mind and Matter in Management Research," SAGE Open, , vol. 3(2), pages 21582440134, May.
    16. Isabel Miralles & Domenico Dentoni & Stefano Pascucci, 2017. "Understanding the organization of sharing economy in agri-food systems: evidence from alternative food networks in Valencia," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 34(4), pages 833-854, December.
    17. Botti, Laurent & Briec, Walter & Cliquet, Gérard, 2009. "Plural forms versus franchise and company-owned systems: A DEA approach of hotel chain performance," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 566-578, June.
    18. Sergio Román, 2014. "Salesperson's listening in buyer-seller service relationships," The Service Industries Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(7), pages 630-644, May.
    19. Salazar Idana & Galve Górriz Carmen, 2011. "Determinants of the Differences in the Downstream Vertical Integration and Efficiency Implications in Agricultural Cooperatives," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 11(1), pages 1-26, February.
    20. Niquidet, Kurt & O'Kelly, Glen, 2010. "Forest-mill integration: A transaction cost perspective," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 207-212, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    sales; sales drivers; sales-performance;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C44 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics - - - Operations Research; Statistical Decision Theory
    • M - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics
    • M31 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Marketing and Advertising - - - Marketing

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ems:eureri:20379. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: RePub (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/erimanl.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.